Rosasharn and Selfishness

Let’s face it: Rosasharn, as interesting as her name may be, is one of the least consequential yet most annoying characters in The Grapes of Wrath. In a way she’s a foil for Ma, that strong, almost paternal presence whose morality sometimes surpasses even Tom’s. Rosasharn is subdued, uncertain, and entirely dependent, providing fodder for the novel’s occasional but potent sexism. In short, she’s every stereotype I hate to see projected onto my gender.

Her greatest crime, however, is that she is unabashedly selfish. Everything she does (which isn’t much) is either in her best interest or in the best interest of her child – but only because having “a freak” (393) would reflect poorly on her, arguably.

She constantly whines about needing milk, and even though Winfield also needs milk, she eyes it jealously until Ma sneaks a small cup of it to her. Worse still, she blames Tom (and, earlier, the deaths of both Grandpa and the dog) for ruining her child, seeing as she herself never sinned, and “didn’ dance no hug-dance” (394). (Remarkably, she never seems willing to hate on Connie, the only character who ever did anything directly to her or her child: abandonment and neglect.) But she admits this not only in a holier-than-thou sense, bragging about her morality, but rather with regret. As her child is already screwed up, she might as well have had some fun at the government camp.

I might be acting a little unfairly toward Rosarsharn, of course. In a sense, she was proven right in the end – her child was stillborn. Whether this was a result of all the sin and depravity she witnessed (as she would like to believe), or merely the malnutrition and poor living conditions they experienced, or the stress and emotional damage from losing Connie and other family members, or just fate itself, Steinbeck never reveals. He leaves things complicated.

But regardless of what caused her child’s death, the fact remains that it changed her in a way that none of their previous troubles could. Everyone else grows over the course of the novel, but it’s not until the very end that Rosasharn finally gets over herself and sheds her selfishness entirely, giving her milk to a total stranger. It’s all she has left to give. As the book implies throughout and states directly multiple times, the poor are the most charitable. And while Rosasharn was always poor, it's not until she has experienced one of life's greatest losses that she takes on this maxim. Her charity in the final pages matches the tragedy of her loss.